![]() ![]() It's no surprise that my big-hearted, wise, and generous friend wrote it. At the heart of this beautiful novel is the complexity of family love, heartache, grief, and the pressures of brilliance. When sharks appear in the water and deliver him unharmed to his mother, what follows is an aftermath story of a different order, the story of what comes after salvation. The novel is set in 1995, and the Flores family is on an expensive rare ocean day trip when seven-year-old Nainoa falls overboard into the Pacific. For a while, I kept a Post-it taped above my desk that said, “Do what Kawai does,” which meant, simply, make time to write no matter what. I knew he untangled sentences in the early predawn hours while his family slept, and I immediately admired the dogged constancy of his work ethic. I met Washburn some years ago, at a writer’s conference, and we became swift friends. Kawai Strong Washburn’s stunning debut novel, Sharks in the Time of Saviors (FSG), navigates family, climate change, fatherhood, fate, mythology and magic, "Told with daredevil lyricism to burn," to quote Marlon James. ![]()
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